No more secrets, p.1
No More Secrets, page 1
part #37 of James Acton Series
NO MORE
SECRETS
A JAMES ACTON THRILLER
J. ROBERT KENNEDY
About the James Acton Thrillers
"James Acton: A little bit of Jack Bauer and Indiana Jones!"
Though this book is part of the James Acton Thrillers series, it is written as a standalone novel and can be enjoyed without reading the other installments.
What readers are saying about the James Acton Thrillers Series:
“A great blend of history and current headlines.”
“You stop breathing from the first page.”
“If you like Indiana Jones then you will love these stories.”
“The Acton series is one of the most entertaining and enjoyable series I have read.”
“Non-stop action that is impossible to put down.”
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BOOKS BY J. ROBERT KENNEDY
Please click here for the intended reading order.
* Also available in audio
The Templar Detective Thrillers
The Templar Detective
The Templar Detective and the Parisian Adulteress
The Templar Detective and the Sergeant's Secret
The Templar Detective and the Unholy Exorcist
The Templar Detective and the Code Breaker
The Templar Detective and the Black Scourge
The Templar Detective and the Lost Children
The Templar Detective and the Satanic Whisper
The James Acton Thrillers
The Protocol *
Brass Monkey *
Broken Dove
The Templar’s Relic
Flags of Sin
The Arab Fall
The Circle of Eight
The Venice Code
Pompeii’s Ghosts
Amazon Burning
The Riddle
Blood Relics
Sins of the Titanic
Saint Peter’s Soldiers
The Thirteenth Legion
Raging Sun
Wages of Sin
Wrath of the Gods
The Templar’s Revenge
The Nazi’s Engineer
Atlantis Lost
The Cylon Curse
The Viking Deception
Keepers of the Lost Ark
The Tomb of Genghis Khan
The Manila Deception
The Fourth Bible
Embassy of the Empire
Armageddon
No Good Deed
The Last Soviet
Lake of Bones
Fatal Reunion
The Resurrection Tablet
The Antarctica Incident
The Ghosts of Paris
No More Secrets
The Special Agent Dylan Kane Thrillers
Rogue Operator *
Containment Failure *
Cold Warriors *
Death to America
Black Widow
The Agenda
Retribution
State Sanctioned
Extraordinary Rendition
Red Eagle
The Messenger
The Defector
The Delta Force Unleashed Thrillers
Payback
Infidels
The Lazarus Moment
Kill Chain
Forgotten
The Cuban Incident
Rampage
Inside the Wire
Charlie Foxtrot
The Detective Shakespeare Mysteries
Depraved Difference
Tick Tock
The Redeemer
The Kriminalinspektor Wolfgang Vogel Mysteries
The Colonel’s Wife
Sins of the Child
Zander Varga, Vampire Detective Series
The Turned
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents
The Novel
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Acknowledgments
Don't Miss Out!
Thank You!
About the Author
Also by the Author
For Robbie Coltrane.
Hogwarts misses you.
“Quantum computer technologies can’t be hacked, and in theory, its processing power can break all encryption.”
Larry Karisny
Director of cybersecurity think tank ProjectSafety.org
“The goal of post-quantum cryptography (also called quantum-resistant cryptography) is to develop cryptographic systems that are secure against both quantum and classical computers and can interoperate with existing communications protocols and networks.”
US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and
Technology
PREFACE
Most people have heard of Quantum Computing, but few realize the potential advancements it could lead to, and fewer still understand how it works. While ultimately speed is a factor, it is the fact it works in a fundamentally different way than current computers that gives it such potential to change our future so dramatically.
It can rapidly perform combinatorics calculations.
Something, again, few people understand.
But this capability could lead to rapid advancements in chemical and biological engineering by quickly modeling different combinations of chemicals and their interactions with each other, including diseases, that could lead to new medicines we haven’t even conceived.
Other areas include artificial intelligence, financial analysis, and large-scale manufacturing optimization. Big problems solved quickly, including those we can’t even imagine yet.
These advancements all have the potential for good, but with the good, also comes the bad, and the same can be said for Quantum Computing, the most obvious being the fact it has the capability of easily cracking most encryption in use today.
Should our enemies succeed first, it could tip the balance of power for decades to come.
1 |
South of Tall el-Hammam, Jordan
Ten Years Ago
Archaeology Professor Laura Palmer sat on her haunches, staring at the newly exposed wall, the scorch marks clearly evident even after thousands of years, the sands of time having preserved evidence of the final destruction of what she was certain was the ancient biblical city of Sodom.
People had been searching for the fabled Sodom and Gomorrah for centuries, if not millennia. It was believed that if they existed at all, they were in the Jordan River Valley near the Dead Sea, exactly where they now were. The dig was considered a wild goose chase, and she had fought long and hard unsuccessfully to obtain funding. So she had turned to her benefactor for help—her ridiculously wealthy brother.
Charles Palmer had made a fortune in telecommunications, recentl y selling his company for hundreds of millions of euros. He had more money than he knew what to do with, and though older than her, it wasn’t by much. She was at the beginning of her career as an academic, and he was already retired, or so he would have the world think.
He was working on something, something he was excited about, something he refused to discuss. It was why he had sold his company. He didn’t want to be wasting his time on the mundane day-to-day tasks of running a large corporation. He wanted all the hours of the day available to him for his research.
He had immediately granted her request, funding the dig entirely, then it was merely a formality taking on a partner from the University of Jordan. It was a small dig, her and a Jordanian professor, half a dozen students each plus about a dozen local hires to do the grunt work and keep things running. It was her first major dig, and she was loving it. It was everything she could hope for, and when her brother had called asking if he could join her, what was already perfection in her mind became bliss.
She loved her brother as any younger sister would, but they rarely saw each other, and their interests were wholly divergent. He was on the cutting edge of technology, and she spent her time studying objects created by man thousands of years ago. Their parents had died too young, so they only had each other in this world, and she was always ecstatic to see him. In all their years, this would be the first time they had worked on something together.
Her brother waved at her with a smile that reminded her of her late father. She returned the wave then he disappeared inside a tunnel they had carved into a ridge they were now convinced was the result of an asteroid impact. The Bible described Sodom and Gomorrah and the Cities of the Plain being destroyed by God’s fury, by fire and brimstone. Modern scientists believed the cities could have been destroyed by an earthquake with mass casualties and destruction that led to the abandonment of the fabled sinful communities, but if that were the case, why the description? Why were the descriptions of hellfire burning the city and not the ground shaking it into rubble?
When she had read the history as related in religious texts, she had always been curious about the description of the destruction and why it didn’t match any of the modern theories. When evidence of an impact crater, almost lost to the winds of time, was mentioned in an obscure journal, its epicenter pinpointed to this region, it had her curiosity piqued and her quest for funding began. Her brother had paid for satellite imagery that was being analyzed by experts to see if there was any evidence of ancient cities within the blast zone, and while they awaited the results, they were digging test holes at the edge of the blast crater searching for debris.
And she had finally found it. A dried timber buried in the sands, scorched as she might expect something to be when exposed to the blast wave of an asteroid impact. It was squared at the edges, clearly used in construction, and once she had it back in London, she would have it carbon-dated to see when it had been cut down, then the residue examined to see what caused the damage.
They could have their answers in short order, but she wasn’t willing to wait, and excavation had continued around the area the timber had been discovered. Leading to her prize find—the shards of a large earthenware vase, intricately painted with a skill level far beyond what one would expect from several thousand years ago. And the subject matter? Scandalous. Further proof, in her mind, that they were indeed in Sodom.
A shout echoed from the nearby tunnel and she shot to her feet as she recognized the fearful cry as that of her brother. One of the locals rushed out of the opening as the ground shook. A plume of dust blasted from the tunnel and she screamed as she shielded her eyes and covered her mouth. She rushed through the billowing dust toward the entrance when somebody grabbed her.
“No, Professor, it’s too dangerous! We have to wait!” It was Jagmeet Sharma, one of her students.
She struggled against him, though her determination to break free waned with the realization that he was right. It would be foolish to blindly charge in. She grabbed the walkie-talkie off her belt. “Charles, can you hear me? Are you all right?” She let go of the push-to-talk button and listened, the only response static. She repeated her call then froze. She could hear her voice nearby. “Everybody, turn your radios off!”
Sharma let go of her, turning his off, and several others indicated they had done the same. She repeated her call and again heard her voice just ahead. A gentle breeze pushed most of the dust away and she could just make out what was left of the tunnel opening ahead. “Charles, do you hear me?”
Again, she heard her own voice. She rushed forward, Sharma not stopping her this time, repeating her call, closing in on her voice. It had to be her brother’s radio, which meant he must have been blown out of the tunnel and could still be alive, though injured and unable to respond.
Sharma pointed. “Over there!”
Her head darted in the indicated direction and she gasped. She rushed forward, stumbling over the debris scattered across the area, and dropped to her knees, grabbing the radio off the ground. It was beaten and scarred, but still functional, which wasn’t necessarily surprising as they were military grade provided by her brother’s former company.
She dropped the radio. “Charles!” There was no response as her eyes scanned the area, finding no evidence of her brother. She rose and headed for the entrance. “We have to get in there! We have to find him!”
Sharma grabbed her again. “Look at it, Professor, it’s completely caved in. It’s too dangerous.”
“We can’t just leave him in there! We have to find him!” she cried, tears flowing freely as she resigned herself to the fact Sharma was right—it was too dangerous. She collapsed to her knees and clasped her face as she sobbed.
Her brother was dead, and it was her fault.
2 |
Lot Residence
Sodom
1649 BC
“I swear, husband, your constant agitation is going to bring this family to ruin.”
Lot regarded his wife Idit. “My agitation, as you call it, is merely concern for my fellow man. You’ve seen how things are. Sodom has become a haven for sinners. I may not have been born here, but this is now my home thanks to you, and I weep at what it’s become. You’re blind to it because you’ve never seen anything different, yet I’ve seen other cities. With the possible exception of Gomorrah, Sodom is by far the worst. Do you realize that within three days’ ride, there are towns and cities not dominated by brothels and gambling establishments, where the men work a hard day then go home to their loving families as opposed to drink and carouse with women they barely know? It’s been happening here for so long that people believe this is normal, that this is the way things are supposed to be, but it’s not. We need to open their eyes to what’s going on around them. Make them see that there’s a better way that will bring them closer to God. Otherwise, I fear everyone here will be condemned for eternity if they don’t change their ways.”
His wife pursed her lips as she stared at him in the fading light then over at the bed their two daughters were sleeping in. They were the reason he had decided action must be taken. They were twelve and ten, yet he had already seen men leering at them. The perversion in this city knew no bounds and he was determined to save his daughters from the sinful ways of their neighbors.
“And just how do you expect to make a difference?”
“By speaking out.”
“And what good has that ever got anybody? At best, you’ll ostracize us from the entire community. At worst, you’ll get yourself beaten to death by one of those sinners.”
He gestured at his daughters. “And what of them? Don’t you think we need to make sure they grow up in a better world?”
His wife took his hand. “And I pray to God every night that they do. But these things are bigger than one man. Surely God is the solution to this, is He not? God should be the one to make the sinners change their ways.”
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